Free People or Free Stuff?

Free People or Free Stuff? That’s what it’s all about. From the Tea Party protests, to the Occupy Wall Street camps, to the latest go-round featuring Ms. Fluke vs Rush Limbaugh, the real issue, the one that no one seems to define correctly is this; do we want to be a free people or a people who demand free stuff?

The driving force behind the Tea Party movement has been the protection of the individual against the tyrannical overreach of big government. Theirs is the full-throated cry of a free people who do not wish to be slaves, and to that end they steadfastly refuse to sacrifice their labor and lives to those who demand something for free.

The Tea Party people have chosen instead to cast off the chains, and turn on their would-be masters, and look at the result. The masters loosed their dogs on them. The media happily served in the vanguard. They ferociously attacked the Tea Party on a daily basis. They fabricated stories about the Tea Party in an attempt to discredit them so that people would disregard their message. The 2010 mid-term election results proved that their efforts failed, people were still willing to listen. Then we saw a new movement rise, the people who demand free stuff. They call themselves Occupy Wall Street.

The Occupy Wall Street people say that they represent the 99% and have continually asserted that we all have a right to certain objects of value; houses, college educations, jobs, etc. But claiming to have a right which forces another to give you something, while they receive nothing in return, demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what a constitutes a right. Rights, as understood by our framers and enshrined by them in our founding documents, are a natural consequence of our existence. We are born with them. None of us enters this world with a cell phone, a month’s supply of birth control pills, or free college tuition clutched within our tiny fists. If this should ever happen we can most certainly revisit the topic.

Free people and people who demand free stuff, cannot peacefully coexist within the same society. For when people demand they be given something for free, what they are doing, whether it be knowingly or unwittingly, is echoing the call made by every despotic and tyrannical government, for the enslavement of some for the benefit of others.

The time for choosing is upon us, what’s it going to be, free people or free stuff?